Are cook books reliable and consistent or poorly written/edited coffee table books? Alf records cooking results as he tries out new recipes.

Wednesday, 20 February 2013

Roasted Tomatoes with Parsley and Macadamia Pesto

From The
Country Cookbook, Belinda Jeffery, Lantern, 2010.

It’s some time since I have cooked from this
excellent book. This time I needed something tasty to go with some cheese
sausages. These tomatoes seemed to fill the bill.

I cut some tomatoes in half and placed them
on a baking tray. They had some olive oil dribbled over them, a pinch of salt
and a pinch of sugar, and they went into a 160ºC oven for an hour and a half
until they had wrinkled.

In the meantime I made the pesto. I took a
bunch of parsley bought from the store. It weighed 86g. This went into the
blender with a garlic clove. It was all pulsed for a few seconds. I now added a
good handful of roasted macadamias and a small teaspoon of salt. Again the
mixture was pulsed. I now added extra virgin olive oil, about ¼ cup, and
pulsed. The mixture was quite stiff at this time. In went juice of half a
lemon, a good few squeezes from the mayonnaise container and some grated
parmesan cheese. It tasted really good. I usually go for a basil pesto but this
one had heaps of flavour.

When the tomatoes were done, some goat’s
cheese was placed on top and they went back into the oven for a few minutes
until the cheese had softened. They then came out and had a dollop of the pesto
on top.

There was a lot of pesto left and some of the
tomatoes so tonight I think I shall cut up the tomatoes and add them to the
pesto. We’ll have pasta and pesto with a little salad.

Taste: ✔✔✔✔

Ease of cooking: ✔✔✔✔

Addendum
the next day: The pasta worked well with the pesto and the roasted
tomatoes though I still prefer a pesto that is made with basil.